Capstone Blog Post #3

In my Capstone project, I thought that silk painting was like any other painting. Turns out there’s a lot more involved. Silk was first used and made in 2696 BC by the Yellow Emperor’s wife, named Leizu. After a while, China was the only one in the world producing silk. And that attracted a lot of Europeans, despite the fact that the walking distance was long. Like really, REALLY long. In fact, it was normal for people from Europe to take an entire year to get silk clothing! The silk was also expensive, so not many people could afford it. 

In ancient China when the Chinese were not one country but tribes, the yellow emperor Xuanyuan Huangdi (pronounced as, shuan-ren Hooang-dee), was the first mythological emperor of China. People then, like all the subjects, wore animal skins. His wife, Leizu, found a silkworm cocoon in her water. And she thought of something no one else would. Normally people’s reaction to this would be,” Ew!! Get it out!” or calmly pick it up and put it in nature. But Leizu, instead, immediately thought that they could use it to make clothing. And after that many women were making silk. Many rich people came and bought it. Of course, it was expensive because silk was smooth and could be used for complex designs. This was great, and over the years silk painting became easier. 

Silk painting went from having over 70 complex steps, to easy and sometimes complicated steps. It can be fun after some practice and tutorials. And, here is the link to my capstone presentation.

Capstone Blog Post #1 – Choosing a Topic

When I started my Capstone research, I had not thought it through enough. Before choosing “watercolors” as my topic I had considered researching WW ll. But I wanted to do something else, so I changed it! I really like my new topic because it has many cool and surprising facts in it, and I can imagine that it’s hard to do all the steps to paint on silk. 

Silk painting takes a lot longer than painting on paper because on paper you can’t really see small mistakes as you are drawing. On paper, if you make a mistake you can always erase it, while on silk it’s a bit complicated. The silk might crumble a bit, and then it may rip if you try to erase a mistake. A lot more could go wrong with silk. Especially since painting on silk has so many steps to it. Some silk paintings even take YEARS to make if they are big and super detailed, when painting on silk remember that it is very fine materials and details are especially used. 

Now since we have machines to print. We don’t use our bare hands to make things anymore, so you can tell how much work was put into some silk pieces from China. Most dresses are hand made, you can search that up and maybe find how people harvest, dye, and sew silk.

Identity Bags

In class, we did an assignment called identity bags. We brought things to show what we like to do. So people can know each other better. I learned from the Identity Bags that I love crafting in anyway possible. I also learned that most people did and liked sports. Some people did where they went, what they did, and what they liked.

Colonial America – pt 1-Overview

In my class, we are doing a project about Colonial America.We made groups to do it. The groups were called , the “New England Colony”, the Middle Colony”, and the “Southern Colony”. We each chose the one we wanted. I chose the “New England Colony”. Then, we did a map to show where we would build our building. We then took the map we made so we can use it as a model. We had some boxes, so we used those to make our town. We each did our own house, then did the other houses. We are going to cover our town in clay, And then we are done.

Colonial America -p2- persona

My character is a farmer and miller. my name is Jane. I have 3 more siblings. My family wanted to get a better life. Since farmers we were poor. We moved to the new world. My mom and dad died on the way. So, I had to take care of my younger 3 siblings.When we got there, the new colony had nothing but land. We had to get  plowing, and harvesting to get some food to last. WE had to build, which took foreeeever. I hope we can survive on this new land.